Getting out of tricky situations isn't easy. But along the way, I get to hang out with princesses (they never wear their crowns), camel jockeys (literally!) and famous (well at least quasi-famous) people...all for the love of media.

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Thursday, July 12, 2012

Sheesh!

Random thoughts from the road…

For the tenth summer in a row it’s the summer of super heroes at the
box office. We’re right in the middle of it now…Avengers ($1.5 billion worldwide
so far), Spiderman ($140 million domestically so far), and Batman coming in
a week. With all of this this box office smashing record business, it brings the
debate, just who is the best super hero.

If there were a March Madness kind of round robin, who would you go
with? Thor vs. Captain America vs. The Hulk vs. Batman? It doesn’t matter as
long as you don’t go with Aquaman as your number one choice. Remember that
story arc in Entourage where Vince Chase is freaking out that James Cameron is
directing the Aquaman movie? He should have never worried because Aquaman is
the bottom of the barrel when it comes to battling the bad guys. This brings me
to the standard bearer of all super heroes: Superman.

The only people that like Superman above the others are the front
runners of the world. I have a news bulleting for everyone…he’s made of steel.
That’s a stacked deck if I ever heard of one. He’s faster than a speeding
bullet and more powerful than a locomotive. His top rival is a bald, middle age
guy with a 180 IQ. The only way to stop this indestructible man is with
Kryptonite. Where do you get this stuff? I mean it blew up decades ago in some
super nova blast from another galaxy. Where is everyone getting this stuff
anyway?

As far as super heroes go, he’s the safe choice. Sheesh!

Even Dana Gordon knew Aquaman was the worst...

Back to reality…I have been awaiting feedback from book chapters that
were submitted to the publisher. Now keep in mind that I was told that when I
started submitting chapters the feedback would be spotty and slow. I would get
it when I get it and that’s the way the cookie crumbled. However, with the
first round, I received instant feedback. When I asked why my editor got back
to me so fast, they said that since the writing was flowing so well he just
couldn’t wait to get information back to me. I thought, well that’s nice and it
allowed me to get into the next batch of writing which I submitted soon
thereafter.

Weeks went by and I heard nothing, so I sent an email to my editor,
Maggie, saying something like, “Did you get the chapters? Any new feedback?”
and of course I got nothing. Then when I spoke to my agent a week later, I
asked him if he heard anything. He told me he sent an email and heard nothing
back. And then we waited another three weeks. At that point I called my editor’s
assistant and asked him to see what’s up. A few days later—now remember this is
now five weeks since I sent in batch two of chapters—I get an email forward to
me through the assistant from my editor:

That caught me a little off guard. I really dislike when people ignore
you for a while and them make it seem like it’s you who is anxious and in this
case “desperate”. From the side of the sanity perspective, it seems desperate
because my first few communication attempts were not replied to in any timely
fashion. I know she didn’t mean it to be negative, but still….”desperate”?
Sheesh.

It’s like that thing people do in a retail setting when you need help.
You know that person behind the cash wrap who is fiddling with the straws or
straightening cups or something and they are half turned away from you. You
wait, but then you give the little, “Pardon me” and you get no reaction so you
go with the “Excuse me…” And you still get nothing so you say, “uh, sir..” and
there’s finally a sharp burst of “I heard you!”

More great customer service

Meanwhile you’re standing there thinking “I’m not impatient; a grunt or
a moan or some type of acknowledgement would have served me just fine.” Really,
the mental “I’ll be with you in a minute” doesn’t cut it because I’m not a mind
reader. Sheesh!

Thank goodness the Kardashians have been pushed back to page three of
the gossip hound and replaced with of all things the shocking TomKat split. I
was listening to the radio while stuck in Los Angeles traffic gridlock when the
great escape was described something like this: “A determined Katie Holmes plotted
her escape from domineering hubby Tom Cruise like a “Mission: Impossible”
operation — using a pal’s disposable cellphone to talk to lawyers in three
states so Cruise couldn’t trace her calls or location.” Whatever happened to
letting this all play out on Divorce Court. Sheesh!

Finally, since the second-to-last-episode of this season’s
Mad Men revealed that Peggy was due to make a cool $120,000 a year managing
accounts (Sheesh!), I wondered what other characters would be making today.
Luckily there are a lot of people with a lot of time on their hands and these
same people came up with this handy chart: